“If you want to truly reach people, it’s not going to be through clinical, careful systems. It’s going to be kind of offbeat, slightly terrifying and surprisingly real, and it’s the only stuff that’s ever going to inspire people. There is no such thing as content. The only thing that causes a commotion is hand-crafted,

Agent 1: This is the guy? Agent 2: Yeah, this is the guy. Agent 1: Remind me why we’re watching him? Agent 2: His web and social media usage was triggering some alert. Agent 1: How so? Agent 2: Well, look at when he posts on Facebook. [A pause. We hear a scroll wheel on

Netflix does it: learns from the tastes of millions to custom-produce content that is almost guaranteed to be a hit. Is that the next big step for social networking companies? Are Twitter and Facebook going to become the new cable networks, the new entertainment companies? After all, what are they going to do with all

Tonight, I’ve got this pretty big speech I get to give in Vancouver. I’m one of seven speakers talking about “what to watch this year in digital,” and it’s for a crowd of 250 people! Am I excited? Absolutely. I really care about the topic I’m speaking about, and I really hope it connects with

I kept “wishing” I was writing more, until something helped me get unstuck recently: figuring out an easy workflow. By knowing exactly how to get a blog post or a block of text from “not written” to published, it has helped me become way faster at getting things published. I recently wrote this summary to

Every time a terrible news story hits us, it sometimes feel like a growing Atlas-style world of sadness is resting on our shoulders. So much suffering and awfulness in our faces, so despairing and fear-inducing, it’s hard to know how to respond properly. I recently started seeing “bad news stories” a little differently, though, thanks

On a drive home one summer day in July 2012, the name David Eby popped into my head, accompanied by a very particular melody. The name “David Eby,” you see, already sounds like the three-syllable lyrics to some ridiculous jazz/scat song, yet as far as I know, nobody had taken advantage of this indisputable-fact-of-nature to

Like many folks geared towards the creative side of life, I tend to experience a broad range of emotions. And as Mr. Hyde must make arrangements to manage Jekyll, I’ve wanted to use my higher-functioning emotional states to manage the lower ones. I’ll put it into a more business-safe context and say this: there is

I wanted Scott Berkun to call his upcoming book “Work is Not a Place,” but alas, he’s going with “The Year Without Pants” — still a good one. The idea is this: many “knowledge jobs” are not about physically being somewhere, they’re about accomplishing something. Yes, for many jobs, place is crucial: construction, medicine, etc.

I sent an article to Contents Magazine in January but didn’t hear back from them. Today I sent them this email (below) to ask what happened. I am still waiting for a response, but thought you all might be interested in reading some helpful tips for some blog posts on content strategy I was considering

One of my secret weapons in digital strategy is Google Scholar. I find that in the web strategy world, research tends to stay confined to things like business whitepapers, popular journalism, web analytics, usability studies, user surveys and blogs/presentations/opinions from thought leaders. But with easy access to countless online academic journals, there is a whole

Hi everybody! On March 27, 2013, I was privileged to be a guest speaker with BCIT’s digital design and development students, in a marketing class that focused that week on content strategy. Thanks to my amazing worker Erin Whittle for inviting me to be part of it. The class followed an amazing format: it was

I was excited to write a post for Domain7 on why content strategy exists: If there are other content strategists in the room, I’d love to ask some more questions based on this: 1) I believe in content strategy 100%. My intention is not to undermine the process by asking what the point of it

So the silence is pretty post-apocalyptic here on my site, but I’m not actually dead. Over with Domain7, I’ve still been busy working and writing and scribbling down words. Here’s a collection of some of the works that have materialized in this new space: My first day at Domain7 “At Pixar, they call it beginner’s

Originally published on the official Domain7 blog. Tips on good project management are as common as pre-printed Royal Wedding memorabilia, and they’re just as useful, too. After all, if project management was just about following instructions, we wouldn’t have construction projects going years beyond deadlines or Fast Ferries being sold for scrap metal. Fact: Nobody

I love it when serendipitous collisions occur and the result is beautiful art. The Longest Poem in the World is a series rhyming couplets drawn from randomly selected Twitter updates. Looking only for end rhyme, the site’s script pairs one tweet with another to make a couplet, then streams couplet and couplet down the never-ending,

Self-Googling, the requisite responsibility of the vain and preening web publisher, reveals two main things about me: one, I’m fortunate enough that my own website is the first result when you Google my name. I know there’s real-life, money-making, old-fashioned corporations that don’t even get to say that. Two, and directly related to number one,